BBC Arabic reported Israeli minister performing "Talmudic rituals" for "so-called Sukkot Festival"

Arabic language media often uses the phrase "Talmudic rituals" as an epithet for anything religious that Jews do. But for a while, the BBC did, too.

In an article published yesterday, as seen in Google cache, BBC Arabic wrote, "Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karai performs Talmudic rituals and prayers for the so-called “Sukkot Festival” in Riyadh."

This mirrors the language in countless anti-Israel and antisemitic sites, including calling Sukkot "so-called." 

Apparently a BBC editor noticed this and changed the story several hours later to say, "The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation 'Kan' reported that Communications Minister Shlomo Karai performed a Jewish prayer called 'Sukkot' in Riyadh." (The prayer isn't called "Sukkot' so the editor didn't quite fix everything.)

But the BBC's original captioning of the video of Karai saying "Hoshanot" as "performing Talmudic prayers" remains at this Arabic news aggregation site, screenshot above.

This points to a long-standing problem at not just the BBC but other Western media sites who rely on anti-Israel Arab reporters to write their stories. The Arabic sections get less editorial oversight than the Western-language sites do, and antisemitic language makes it into the supposedly professional Western media. 

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